Printing

If the system allows the use of a printer, stedi offers the possibility of sending the file in the current buffer directly to the printer in one of two modes. The P command line command prints the current buffer just as it appears on the screen in the editor, and the PF command sends the file to the printer with limited formatting capabilities. The PP command sets the length of a page for the latter. These commands are explained below. In addition a port selection can be made if more than one printer port exists. This is done with the `P=<port>' command.

P

Print the contents of the buffer. These contents are sent to the printer just as they appear on the screen. Thus folds that are closed are printed as closed folds and tabs are expanded to the number of spaces they currently represent according to the editor's settings. Otherwise all characters are sent as they are. The end of a line is indicated by a carriage return + linefeed which will be interpreted correctly by most printers. Otherwise all characters are sent directly to the printer uninterpreted. Hence if the file contains non-standard ASCII characters, these may have consequences for the printer settings. (You may also put such characters in the text deliberately for printer control - see the chapter on `Hex mode' p. .)

PF

As with the P command, this command causes the contents of the buffer to be printed, but with the added feature that a limited number of lines per page are printed with a page number at the bottom of each page and an optional left margin offset. The length of a page and the left margin offset can be set with the PP command. Note that the length of the page should include one empty line and a line for the page number. After each page number has been sent to the printer, the editor sends a formfeed to skip to the next page.

PPn1,n2

This command sets the number of lines per page (n1) and optionally it sets a left margin offset (n2). This latter number causes the printer to create a left margin by printing that number of spaces in each line before starting to print the contents of the buffer. These two numbers are stored in the default buffer so when the DW command is issued they are written to the default file for future use. The number of lines per page set by the PP command must be two more than the number of lines of text actually desired to allow for a blank line before the page number and then a line for the page number itself. As all printers are not alike, some experimenting may be required in order to find the best setting for a given printer. The default number of lines per page is 60 and the default left margin offset is set to zero. If the first number is less than five, stedi sets the number of lines to five. If both numbers are omitted entirely, the PP command causes a message to be printed in the message bar telling the current number of lines per printer page and the current left margin offset.

P=

On most computers this command won't have any effect.

Examples:

PP66

sets the number of lines per printer page to 66

PP60,5

sets the number of lines per printer page to 60, with a left margin of 5 spaces.

PP

queries for the current number of printer pages and the right margin offset.